In the late spring of 2008 the acclaimed Irish writer Nuala O' Faolain went on a national Irish radio programme to tell the Irish people that she was dying of cancer. She was frightened of death and of the short time left to her. Here was a spokesperson for a generation which now conjured up an abyss for itself, reviewing a culture she had inhabited and helped to create one last time. She believed neither in an afterlife nor in God. With Nuala O'...